


For a Purpose

by Mythwine



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 16:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2116278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythwine/pseuds/Mythwine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why did Odin pick up the abandoned baby in Jotenheim?  Frigga has a secret that she has never dared to share with her sons.  Because *more* secrets and messed-up angst was just what this family needed.</p>
<p>Warnings:  Death and Secrets</p>
            </blockquote>





	For a Purpose

Getting the throne did nothing to calm Loki’s nerves. The sense of power he felt harnessed in Gungnir was hardly soothing. But he could do little about it. Confronting Odin was no longer an option, now that the man had inconveniently fallen asleep. Or suspiciously conveniently, rather. But his mother’s – Frigga’s – words, that this was not the usual course of things merely left him with more questions. What was different now? _*Everything*_ as far as Loki was concerned, but Odin had known all along. Loki could not call the feelings writhing beneath the surface of his forcibly calm exterior ‘unease’ – that sounded far too tame for what he was experiencing. He did not know if it were rage or despair – probably both – and neither had been allowed to run their course, but merely doused by the abrupt interruption to their conversation. He wanted to howl at the sky. He wanted someone to _*bleed*_ for what had been done. 

And so Frigga was left in the unenviable position of having to answer for her husband. Not that she was any less adept than Odin at side-stepping conversations, as her recent decision of handing him a scepter proved, but… she had a fatal flaw. She seemed to genuinely care, and Loki knew that he could use that against her. And even as king of Asgard, he need not sit the throne all the time. He suspected he would find her watching over his – over Odin, and she was there, there where he had left her. Trapped, now, though she did not show it.

“You’ve told me yourself – Odin never does anything without reason. So what was the reason?” Loki demanded. He did not have to specify the topic for her, he did not think. 

His mother shook her head. “He couldn’t tell you. Please do not hold that against him.”

“Not…not hold it against him?” Loki asked, enraged. “My entire life has been a lie, the man I thought a father no more than a victorious conqueror claiming spoils of war, and I…I mustn’t blame him for not telling me why?”

Frigga had the audacity to smile. It was a sad smile, but even so. “It…it wasn’t about you,” she said, sounding tired and resigned.

“How could my theft as a baby not be about me?” Loki asked suspiciously.

“It…it wasn’t,” she said. “Something happened, before the war, and…and that was why Odin brought home a baby from Jotenheim.”

“What? What happened? Will you not tell me?”

Frigga looked at him, and ran her hand through his hair. “Oh, Loki. You will not like this story.”

“Surely it is no worse than ones I’ve been devising myself?” he challenged her.

“We’ll see,” she said. And then, he wisely shut up, knowing that he’d won, and that her will to hide this from him had crumbled. 

“Thor’s birth was…difficult,” she said. “And while they assured me at the time that it was my chance to go to Valhalla, I did not take much comfort in the thought that I would never know my…my son.”

“I never knew that,” Loki said, disturbed at the thought of Frigga dying before he’d even had a chance to meet her. Then he remembered that she was *not* his mother, and he tried to shake that thought aside.

She was not smiling. “I never speak of it,” she said, in explanation. “I informed Odin that I would not give him another child, and that he would have to be content with the…with the one.”

“And of course he was not,” Loki said in exasperation. “He had to fetch back an enemy babe for you, as a… as a souvenir of battle.” 

“We did not discuss it in advance, so I cannot tell you what he was thinking,” she said, and her tone told him she would appreciate fewer interruptions and asides. He subsided, wanting to hear as much of her story as she would share with him, eager to tear it to pieces. 

“I thought that Thor would not remember the circumstances of his birth, as he was only a baby at the time. And indeed, he seemed a normal enough child, though every mother sees something special in everything her baby does. And so when he learned to crawl, he was a terror, and insisted on exploring every conceivable space. I thought he was merely curious, adventurous, with the complete lack of fear so common in children who have not yet learned what danger is.”

“This does not surprise me at all,” Loki said with a scowl.

Frigga did smile then. “I knew you as a babe as well, and can speak of your constant cries for attention. You did not like to be put down for even a moment.” His scowl deepened, and Frigga laughed, a quiet subdued thing. 

“But when Thor began to talk, I knew something was wrong. His first question was ‘Where brother?’”

Loki froze. “Thor could speak before I was born,” he said slowly.

His mother nodded. “Yes.”

“How did he…he…he couldn’t have known about me!” Loki insisted.

“No,” Frigga agreed. “He could not.”

Loki looked at her with something akin to fear in his eyes, but she knew from experience that it was closer to anger and hate. “Oh, I am not going to like this at all,” he said.

“When your father brought you home,” and yes, his look objected bitterly to _that_ designation, but he did not interrupt, “Thor was thrilled. He picked you up and nearly smothered you in his excitement.”

“I was so well cared for,” Loki said looking away. “It’s a marvel I survived at all.”

“I snatched you out of his hands and struck him, informing him that was not how we treated babies.”

“Oh, to learn gentleness through hitting, I see he took the lesson well.”

“I was terrified,” she explained in a low voice. 

“Oh, surely even the mighty Thor was not so strong as a toddler. I’m sure you could handle his childish temper tantrums.”

“That wasn’t what I feared. Even though there was no way for him to remember it, he had had a brother.”

“What?” Loki asked.

“Thor’s birth was difficult,” she repeated. “I…I was carrying twins. Thor was born first. The other…the other was stillborn. They told me he was strangled in the womb.”

“No.” Loki stood and walked away. “I…I am merely a replacement for your dead child? The first free baby Odin found lying about, he brought home, so Thor could have a replacement for the brother he had already killed?”

“Don’t say that!” Frigga demanded, scandalized. “It is not unusual for the cord to wrap around a babe’s neck. It is…it is merely an unfortunate accident.”

“Please, mother, you do not believe that,” Loki spun on her. “You’ve known Thor his whole life, but I have known him nearly all of mine as well. Do you know how many pets he “accidentally” killed in our childhood? He never meant to, no, but he was too strong and they were too fragile, and that was the end of that. You know what really happened. Why else were you so fearful when his reaction to meeting me was so nearly to smother me?”

She turned from him and would not meet his eyes. “It was not my choice to have a second son,” she said.

“So you disown me now, when it is convenient?” he said bitterly.

“No, never,” she said. “It was not my choice, but when Odin handed you to me, I… I was only happy. Filled with joy. That…that something I had thought closed to us was…that I had a second chance, to be a mother.”

“So I am Thor’s fated younger brother, then,” he said, still bitter. “Does he know?”

“I doubt it. As a child, he seemed to know that his brother was missing, but after we introduced him to you, he never asked after his missing brother again. I have never told him.”

Loki smiled, and it was his ugly, malicious smile. His mother seldom saw that look directed at her. “Shall I tell him for you? Tell him how he has been nothing but a careless murderer since before he was born? I’m sure he’d enjoy hearing that story from my lips.”

“I cannot tell him,” Frigga said, staring at him steadily. 

Loki’s smile fell away. “I see then. You want me to do what you are too weak to do…to provoke Thor’s hatred by being the bearer of unpleasant tidings, so that he will come to you for comfort, not in accusation.”

“I cannot tell him,” Frigga repeated, “but he will not believe the story until he hears me confirm it. And he will not ask, unless someone tells him of it.”

Loki gave her a swift calculating look. “Cannot? Is this some trick of Odin’s?”

She smiled at him thinly. “I cannot say.”

Oh, this was rich. Now she was using him, too. How many years had Frigga chafed holding this secret close to her heart, wishing for a way to circumvent Odin’s heavy-handed decree. And yet…the moment Loki learned of his heritage, she jumped at her chance. She would tell him, he would tell Thor, and then she could have the conversation she wished to with her darling son. 

When Thor returned.

Loki smiled. There was one _*small*_ problem with that plan. He had no intention of allowing his brother to return to Asgard. The throne was much more comfortable with Odin asleep and Thor reduced to a mortal on Midgard, after all.

But when Frigga smiled to see his smile, he knew he had missed something somewhere. The problem with being from a family of schemers was that even the God of Mischief could fall into traps and become part of a more elaborate web… and she’d known him since he was a squalling babe, as she’d just reminded him. 

But he was a child no longer, and not her child, either. 

He had to decide what he would tell Thor. Frigga had given him her agenda, but he had barbs of his own that he intended to fling at his brother. Poor, helpless, defenseless Thor. Who would not guess at Loki’s new truth, who would not know to look for the daggers… who would have no way of discovering the lies. Loki could tell him _*anything*_.

**Author's Note:**

> ...and then Loki goes and talks to Thor at the Mjölnir crater. 
> 
>  
> 
> I suppose that I get the impression in the first Thor movie that Frigga is just kinda there. I have trouble getting a read for her, and just wanted to look at what a conversation about Loki's frost giant heritage with her would look like. And then this happened.


End file.
